Cinema and music: Adventures of silent movies - IOIC South America Tour
The Swiss institute IOIC - Institute of Incoherent Cinematography celebrates its 10th anniversary in September with a tour of Chile, Argentina and Brazil, displaying a selection of silent fiction films and documentaries about audacious adventures and glorious expeditions, and experimental films whose very form is daring and adventurous. Science fiction films that explore the fantastic world of the most modern technologies, other ethnographic and documentary films on the margin of the civilized world, reports of expeditions and trips, the conquest of places as remote as the South Pole, Mount Everest or the planet Mars, and experimental films that examine the dreamlike character of the modern environment.
All these films are presented with live bands of international musicians of various genres, from jazz and improvised music, to post-rock, electronics and contemporary experimental music. One of the main events of the tour will be the screening of Marcel L'Herbier's film "L'Inhumaine" in Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro with a changing orchestra of international improvisers formed exclusively for this collective musical improvisation.
As part of BIENALSUR, this audiovisual experience can be enjoyed on September 12 at the Xirgu Espacio UNTREF.
This festival is part of the COINCIDENCIA - Intercambios culturales Suiza-América del Sur - program of the Swiss Foundation for Culture Pro Helvetia.
Program September 12
19 h Abstraction experiments: German architect and artist Walter Ruttmann, director of the visual poem on the German capital "Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Großstadt", is apart from Hans Richter, the great point of reference for any filmmaker who explores the world of cinematographic abstraction. The title "Lichtspiel" means set of lights and refers to what cinema was called in the 1920s: "Lichtspieltheater" namely Set of lights Theatre.
Movies: Lichtspiel: Opus I (DE 1921, 12 min), Walter Ruttmann; Lichtspiel: Opus II (DE 1923, 4 min), Walter Ruttmann; Lichtspiel: Opus III (DE 1924, 4 min), Walter Ruttmann; Lichtspiel: Opus IV (DE 1925, 4 min), Walter Ruttmann.
Music: Claudio Caldini (elec). In his own films, experimental filmmaker Claudio Caldini emphasizes the idea of cinema as an activity of absolute direct vision. At the Teatro Xirgu espacio UNTREF, Caldini is going to make a live soundtrack of these four abstract shorts of the classical avant-garde, the epoch where this idea arose.
20 h The invitation to the journey: this is Germaine Dulac's last impressionist film before the scandalous eruption of "La coquille et le clergyman" (The shell and the clergyman) the following year. The previous film is inspired by a poem by Charles Baudelaire and is an attempt to free itself from any kind of cinematic narrative. It is a visual symphony of rhythmically assembled images representing projections of visceral feelings.
Film: L'invitation au voyage (The invitation to the journey) (FR 1927, 40 min), Germaine Dulac
Music: Agathe Max (vl, elec). French violin virtuoso Agathe Max is famous for her solo violin concerts in which she modifies the sound with a variety of loops, distortions and other effects.
21 h One sixth of the world: through a film journey that is a collage between newsreels and found footage that shows a multitude of villages in remote areas of the Soviet Union. It is a passionate call for unification to create a complete socialist society.
Film: Shestaya chast mira (One sixth of the world) (UK 1926, 75 min), Dziga Vértov
Music: Elgar - Hans Koch (bcl, ss), Florian Stoffner (g) & Lionel Friedli (dr). The live sound of this film will be made by Elgar, a free improvisation trio with Hans Koch on bass clarinet and soprano saxophone, Florian Stoffner on guitar and Lionel Friedli on drums.
22.30 h Dark objects of desire: the Belgian avant-garde is unfairly relegated in comparison with the French avant-garde. This is put to the test by the two filmmakers Henri d'Ursel and Ernst Moerman. In a Paris that resembles that of Louis Feuillade's serials, the protagonist of "The Pearl" starts looking for the desired object, but it constantly escapes him in a series of events, one rarer than the other. The surrealistic satire "Monsieur Fantômas" is also a tribute to the demoralizing knight and conjures up a world in which nothing is impossible.
Movies: La perle (FR 1929, 35 min), Henri d'Ursel; Monsieur Fantômas (BE 1937, 17 min), Ernst Moerman
Music: Juan Petrini (elec)., Bahian musician Juan Petrini experiments with modular synthesizers and mixes generative music with frequencies and random modulations for the sonorization of these two pearls of surrealist cinema .